| He walked into the room and turned off the light. He didn’t deserve to be in the light. His heart couldn’t stand the illumination.
“I severely dislike my life,” he said to the nothingness that surrounded him. He wished that he could say “hate,” but he couldn’t. He just wasn’t raised that way. Damn his mother.
“I love that you’re from the South, Riley. You’re such a gentleman. You open doors and pay for dinner,” she had said. Well where in the hell had that Southern upbringing gotten him?
The middle of f***ing nowhere.
It had started simply enough. A phone call.
“Hey Katy, it’s Riley, from Political Science.” A pause as she thought.
“Oh, yeah, hi Riley. What’s going on?”
“I was wondering if…” and it had gone on from there. He had done everything right, just as his mother had taught him. He picked her up for dates, he opened her car door, he paid for dinner, and he walked her to her door at the end of the evening. He complimented her, he bragged about her to his friends. He hadn’t gone too fast, the physical aspect of their relationship hadn’t been rushed or forced at all. He had sat her down and told her how he was.
“Katy, you need to know this about me. I don’t love easily. In fact, I’ve never been in love. I’ve been in relationships before, but they’ve never worked out, and I’ve never been that upset about it. I haven’t found that girl, my girl. I know she’s out there, and I’m looking for her. And while I was looking, I found you. You have the potential to be her, Katy. I want you to be that girl, my girl, so badly, but I’m not going to force it to happen. I like you so much, but I don’t love you. Yet. But you know, I think I might. Can you handle that for now? Can you take what I have to give and wait patiently until I know for sure?”
Delighted, Katy had thrown her arms around him and wondered aloud how he always seemed to know just what to say. And she knew that he meant it. With him, you could just tell.
Three months later, Riley and Katy were on the dance floor. Katy was wearing her cute little flippy skirt and it was then that he knew. He Knew.
As he spun Katy in to his body, “Katy, I love you.” He tried to spin her back out, but she didn’t move. She stood there in his arms, against his heart, for exactly thirteen seconds. It was forever. He would never know what she thought in those eternal thirteen seconds, but he did know that his life was hanging in the balance. But when Katy looked up at him, he could tell that it was then that she knew. He could see the love shining out of her eyes, like the light of life. Every other song that night was slow.
He was in love forever. She was in love for seven months and eight days.
“It’s not you, Riley, it’s me.” She didn’t even have the grace to cry. Her voice was flat, emotionless. Her face was dead. He looked at her and saw nothing.
“You LIE!” he felt like screaming, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Damn his mother. There were so many things he wanted to ask. He had a running monologue in his head.
“How could you do this to me? How could you take what we have and just throw it away? What is WRONG with you? Haven’t I given you everything that I have, everything that I am? Why am I not enough anymore?”
But he was trapped by his ingrained sense of respect. He wouldn’t cause her distress. Calmly he asked her why she was doing this.
“I have to,” was her reply. There was no explanation, no justification. She was there. She was his. And then she was gone. His heart was there. It was hers. And then it was gone.
He walked into his soul and turned off the light. His world was shrouded in darkness. She had taken his light; she had taken her light from him. She had ripped apart all that had been his and all that he had meant to be hers.
“Mom, you told me that all I needed to be was myself. You said that any girl would be lucky to have me. You told me that when I was ready to give a girl my heart, I’d find the right one to give it to. Well, Mom, I gave her my heart. She took it, and she kept it, and then she decided that she didn’t want it anymore. She gave it back to me today, but the problem is that she didn’t give it back whole. She tore it to pieces, and she kept the biggest piece for herself. I’m afraid that I won’t ever get that piece back.”
His mother had no answer for him. It was the first time that had ever happened. It was then that he knew. He Knew. If his mother couldn’t explain why, couldn’t make the hurt go away, couldn’t fix the problem, then it meant that there was no solution. There was nothing to be done. He would feel this way for always. She had tried, of course. She had made soothing noises on the phone and fed him clichés and platitudes, but he could tell that she didn’t know what to say. That had shaken him. What to do when Mom doesn’t know the answer?
He lived for a while. He knew because he kept waking up. That was the definition of living, the waking up every day to start the whole damn thing over again. In the darkest recesses of his mind, he admitted to himself that he hoped the living would stop. He just didn’t see the point to it anymore, without her.
“Man, I really dislike the cliché of not being able to live without the one that broke your heart. I never thought that this would be me. I can’t believe that she has reduced me to this mess of shattered emotions. What the hell did I ever to do her, except give her my everything?” He had gotten into the habit of talking to himself, now that she wasn’t there to listen to his thoughts. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but she had slowly encompassed his whole world. She had become his life, and now that she was gone, it was as if his life didn’t exist anymore. It was as if he didn’t exist anymore.
“Hey Riley, it’s John. Man, we’re going to the soccer game over at the park. Do you want to come? You know you want to, come on,” his friend had said on the phone. This was one of many calls made to him asking that he pay them even a fraction of the attention he used to, before Katy. After a while, the calls stopped coming. He doubted that his friends even knew that they’d broken up. Who would have told them? They had eventually drifted out of his circle of awareness. He had unintentionally severed all ties.
Katy was walking towards him through an empty field. He vaguely wondered where the field was, but then found he didn’t care. It seemed to take forever for her to get to him, but she finally ended up right in front of his face.
“What are you doing here? What more could you possibly want from me?” he asked her sharply. “Is there something you forgot? Did you want my soul as well as my heart? Did you not get enough entertainment out of smashing my world to bits? Do you want to send me straight to Hell too?”
He closed his mouth in shock. He had never spoken harshly to a female in his life. He couldn’t believe these words were coming out of his mouth. But they didn’t stop there.
“Crap, Katy. I have had just about all I can take of you. You want me, you don’t want me, you love me, you don’t love me; why don’t you just pick one and stick with it? I can’t handle this back and forth stuff, it’s killing me slowly inside. You’re killing me. Just get on with it. And, honestly, I hope that you pick the stay away option. My heart, or at least the pieces that you left me, just can’t deal with you anymore.”
He stopped and took a deep breath, waiting for her reaction. He didn’t have to wait long.
Katy opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came. Instead, great gut-wrenching sobs wracked her body. She cried forever, and he just stood there and watched. And then he smiled and turned his back to walk away.
Riley sat straight up in bed, gasping for air. That was the most vivid dream he could ever remember having.
“Man what would Mom think of me now? I took pleasure out of watching Katy’s pain. No matter what she did to me, that’s not right. I wasn’t raised that way. Now I feel guilty about having my heart ripped out of my chest, instead of just feeling like crap all over. WONDERFUL. Why can’t she just leave me alone? Now she’s even invaded my dreams.”
Riley went on about his day, about his life. He knew that one day he would be again, and he lived for that day.
I sat down at my kitchen table and pondered my orange juice. He didn’t know that to me he was perfect. He didn’t know that I had been watching him. He didn’t know that one day, when his heart was whole again, it would be mine.
“I love you sweetheart,” I said to my future.
<3333 | 
idk if i'ma put them on here but i'll put them on myspace of course ((once i figure out how to put the pics on the comp cuz i keep forgeting)) but yeah camp just gets better every year! 
i can't wait til i get the cd
no Ben...no Scott...no Garrett...no Emma...no Kayla...=MEGA SADNESS.
